


The Charnal Ship

by harper_m



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, old school horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 03:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harper_m/pseuds/harper_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colonial AU. A cursed Cara comes to Kahlan, demanding back that which was stolen from her, and trailing a monster of ice in her wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Charnal Ship

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to lettersandsodas for the extensive input and multiple critiques she provided in service of making this as historically accurate and in character as possible. It was greatly improved as a result. I continued to tinker, however, so if something is amiss, it's my fault.
> 
> Fall is my favorite season, Halloween my favorite holiday, and horror one of my favorite genres. This is a homage to that trifecta of favorites.

Kahlan wiped the back of her hand across her forehead but it did little good, as wet from dishwater as her forehead was with sweat. With the windows closed and the night unseasonably warm for early May, the air inside the tavern was heavy and hot. “Go on to bed, Dennee,” she said, rubbing idly at the ache that had settled into her lower back while she’d been bent over the basin. “I’ll be finished here soon.”

Dennee, so tired she was swaying on her feet, nodded reluctantly. “You’re sure?”

“It’s the work of a few minutes. Go.”

In the still of the night, with only the light of a single, soon to be guttered candle, the main room of the Hooded Wight looked almost respectable. They’d wiped down tables, put chairs back in their proper places, and swept away the worst of the dust, and Kahlan had given the mugs and cups as good of a wash as they were going to get. The morning’s porridge was already in the pot, cooking in the last of the night’s embers; supper’s dishes had been done by the girl they hired on to cook, and the only thing remaining before she could find her pallet was to put them away. They’d done a brisk business. The stocks had been full that morning, drawing the crowds, and she’d been on her feet since sun-up. At noon, she’d joined the crowd, selling johnny cakes and cider to the onlookers at fair price; her other trade, plied on the side, had fattened her purse considerably more.

She sighed, thinking of her bed, and threw the dishrag over her shoulder before tilting her head back, closing her eyes, and rolling her shoulders. It was but minutes away, and none too soon.

The attack came without warning.

There was no sound, nothing to give it away, and the knife’s blade was against her neck before she sensed the body behind her. The intruder, pressed hard against her back, was cold and sharp in a way that bit through the fabric of her dress like a winter wind, and she knew without doubt she was as close to greeting death as was a body swinging from the gallows. Held in its grip, even, and she imagined looking down at the hand holding the knife and seeing the fleshless bone of the Reaper personified. It set her heart to racing until it was pounding so hard it ached, a portent of the cruel joke it would be were she to end up murdered in her own home with her blood soaking the tavern’s freshly swept floor.

“Scream and I’ll silence you permanently, Madam.” The voice was low and surprisingly feminine but no less terrifying for it, backed by the press of steel into tender flesh.

Kahlan swallowed shallowly, conscious of the sharp edge of the knife’s blade pricking her skin. A hint more pressure, and it would be slick with her blood, yet despite the danger clear in the stark warning, she was not completely without recourse. She considered pressing her luck. Her sister was just upstairs and not yet asleep. There were others, renting rooms, and she’d seen at least one brace of pistols. If she cried out, surely help would come quickly enough to save her.

“You may test me,” the voice continued, with a low menace that made Kahlan freeze, “but if you do, you’ll find I keep my word.”

She had a cup in her hands, still. She could smash it into the intruder’s face and flee. But no, she was taller. She could tell by the angle of the hold. There’d be no reaching anything so delicate as the face. Smash it against the bar, then, and drive the shard into the intruder’s thigh. And maybe have her throat slit, she decided despairingly. It would take little more than a flinch to do it.

“What do you want?” she asked, thoughts of defiance held at bay.

The knife bit at her skin as the hand around its hilt tightened; she’d never felt anything so cold, Kahlan thought. The metal could have been a shard of ice, the hand holding it full of the frost of the grave. “You have something of mine. My want is that you should return it.”

“Me? What could I have of yours?”

The knife tightened again, and Kahlan felt it nick through flesh. It drew blood, the trickle scalding hot against the sudden, unnatural chill spreading from the blade’s bite. “You have quick hands, Madam, and a light touch, and for that I extended to you the courtesy of coming under the cover of dark. I could have called you out amongst the townsfolk today, but I did not.” The voice turned snidely mocking. “I wonder how many of them have troubled over a missing watch or purse? Surely they would have been surprised to learn the identity of the thief in their midst, though the cutpurse’s luck may have held fast to your side. They were in a fine mood, watching the less than virtuous get their due. No doubt they would have been forgiving of your indiscretions.”

Kahlan knew what they would have been – a mob, drunk on the elixir of punishment and aroused by violence. Tempers were running high as it was, with word coming of even more sanctions from King George and talk of revolution building momentum as it roiled through town. The Sons of Liberty were beginning to advocate for armed insurrection, and news of the passage of the Tea Act was doing nothing to quell it. People she had known all of her life would have turned on her in an instant and she would have found herself joining the wretched souls in the stocks, or worse.

“I see you understand,” the intruder said, feeling Kahlan’s shoulders slump. “Can I have your word, then, that you will not seek to raise a cry?”

“You will have what you came for and go?” Kahlan asked, thinking of her takings from that day. They were rich, but not worth defense at the cost of her life.

“I will, Madam.”

“Then you have my word.”

The knife removed, Kahlan turned slowly. It would be this one, Kahlan thought. It would be the scoundrel who had given her a suggestive smile and a wink as she paid for her cider, the one with eyes that focused on places they shouldn’t and left them there without shame. Not that this one would know shame for anything. Even in the dim light from the single candle, her features were plainly visible, as was her dress. In her crimson sailor’s coat, cream waistcoat and breeches, her identity was clear.

“You’re one of Rahl’s Raiders,” Kahlan said, unable to hide her scorn.

Though she wasn’t yet ready to say so in public, Kahlan harbored support for her more vocal counterparts, the ones who publicly advocated for shedding the yoke of Britain’s rule. She was a thief, yes, trained and commanded by her father, but she was not the sort to openly court accusations of treason. She may have resented the overbearing ways of the monarch and, by proxy, his colonial representatives, as much as the next patriot, but she kept her treasonous thoughts to herself.

Such tact had no place in the face of one of Rahl’s Raiders. They were widely reputed to be little more than villains and cutthroats, violently imposing the will of their Captain on the seas and on the land under cover of the King’s favor. They were an all-female crew, a rarity, each with a thick braid stretching down the length of her back, but no man had ever been more vicious. This one – at least she’d had a braid earlier in the day, when it had been the lot of them, freshly landed on shore. Now, her hair was ragged around her shoulders, as if the braid had been removed with a rough cut of the knife, and a gash on her lip had left it stained with blood. She’d been beaten, that was clear, her once pristine uniform stained with grass, dirt, and blood. The look in her eyes belied the relative calm of her voice; even in the low light, they glinted with fury. Perhaps, even, with the hint of fear.

Worse, though, was the pallor of her skin, a rich blue-gray that coated her as thoroughly as if she was covered with frost, and as she watched, Kahlan saw, with horrible clarity, the icy cloud of her breath on the hot night air. Closer inspection revealed the crystals of ice that gleamed in her eyelashes and shone in her hair, the frost dulling the sheen of her uniform’s shiny buttons, and the way she shuddered with the fine, barely visible tremors of one long in the cold despite the wretched heat,

Kahlan gasped involuntarily and drew back in horror.

“I suggest you hurry,” the woman said, her once cocky, inviting smile twisted into something pinched and bitter.

“Your money isn’t here,” she said, swallowing hard, shivering against the cold emanating from her uninvited visitor. The sailor had a flintlock pistol at one hip, half-cocked, and a saber at the other, with a look in her eyes that hinted at willingness to use either. “It is,” she corrected quickly, when the sailor tensed as if to spring at her, and she could see the knife still close and glinting dully, “but hidden away.”

“Then go retrieve it.” The sailor looked quickly at the door, a muscle flexing in her jaw as she breathed in deeply. “With haste, Madam. They come.”

It had been folly. She’d known it at the time, but it had been too tempting, the thought of taking back from the Raiders some of what they were taking from innocents making the same Atlantic crossing Kahlan had herself. The purse had been modest, but the pieces of silver she’d liberated from the arrogant sailor well worth the risk. At least, that’s what she’d told herself as the thrill of the moment had arced through her.

She was rarely so stupid.

The gathering chill of the room seemed to sink beneath Kahlan’s skin. The day’s spoils had not yet been counted – there had been no time, between the crowd and the flow of patrons – and so the only benefit to arise from the situation was that her father would not miss the coins. If it would but hasten the sailor on her way again, Kahlan knew she would not miss it either.

“Take it,” she said, breathless, as she ran back into the room. The purse was nestled in her palm, and if she hadn’t been concerned about the pistol at half-cock on the sailor’s hip, she would have flung it at her. “Take it and go from here.”

The hand that clamped down on her wrist left behind the sting of frostbite. The sailor’s eyes shone with what could only be terror, though banked, and perhaps a hint of sympathy. “They draw near,” she said, the words hanging as ice in the air. “You must flee, Madam, before it is too late.”

Kahlan tugged hard, desperate to free herself from the sailor’s frozen grip. “I’ve given you what you sought. Go. Please.”

They remained that way, locked at cross purposes until the sailor flinched.

Kahlan heard it first as a distant sound. Metal scraping upon stone, perhaps, or booted feet against wooden planking. It seemed to draw closer with a slow, inexorable finality until she imagined the source of it at the tavern’s door, waiting.

As one, they held their breath.

As if a ghost hand had flung it open, the tavern’s door crashed inward with the force of a gale wind behind it, and a mid-winter’s chill filled the room. No, colder, Kahlan thought, and bitter in a way that even the January wind sweeping across the Bay was not. It sang with the metal edge of blood and crept through the room with unrelenting stealth. Kahlan watched in horror as frost formed on the windows, creeping in from edge to center, and as a thick skin of ice formed on the abandoned dishwater with unnatural rapidity.

“What is this?” she whispered, already numb and shivering with the cold.

From outside, the sound of slow scraping disappeared behind the high-pitched whistle of a non-existent wind, the kind that crept through walls and windows in the bleakest of winter storms. It was sheer madness, an impossibility. It was not of the mortal world, could not be.

This, she knew, was the true face of death, not the woman at her side. It was death at her door, wrapped in a shroud of ice, and she shrank back as the edge of a shadow, dense as night, inched across the Wight’s doorway.

“We must go,” the sailor said, watching with hardened eyes as the shadow crossed the threshold. “Come, the back entrance.”

Kahlan felt as if her shoes were frozen to the wood flooring, held fast as if trapped in ice.

“Now, Madam,” the sailor said, giving her a hard tug. The shadow was creeping ever forward, one arduous inch at a time, its blackness so complete the world looked lost beneath its reach. “We are not safe here.”

Terror left her helpless, and Kahlan felt herself being pulled away. The tips of her fingers were numb, as were her toes, and she was shivering as if she’d gone out in the deepest winter in only the barest of dresses. She stumbled, barely able to feel her feet beneath her, through the kitchen with its now cold embers and out into the bracing warmth of the night air.

As if warmed in front of a fire, she felt the feeling return painfully to her hands and feet, the chill which had borne her in its grip instantly releasing her hold.

Kahlan spun to the sailor, heedless of the threat she represented. “What was that?”

“Retribution, Madam,” the sailor said, already leading the way down the alley. “We must not tarry. They will follow. You may stay if you wish and test their intent, but I prefer to live through the night. Come morning, we will be safe. They do not travel in the daytime.”

“But my sister…”

“Will be fine,” the sailor snapped. “Their sight is focused squarely upon a few, of which I am one. You may be spared, and are welcome to stay here and see. Tempt fate of your own accord or flee, Madam, but decide, and quick.”

The panes of glass at the back of the Wight, previously untouched, blazed with the sheen of frost.

Kahlan ran.

The dirt beneath their feet was soft, not yet dry from rain three days past, but soon they were upon gravel, then road, footsteps echoing loudly in the oppressive quiet. All of the houses were dark, their occupants abed, but the horses in the stables were restless in the way they became in the face of a gathering storm. The moon was waning, just past full, but bright enough to light the path in front of them. In flight, Kahlan became disoriented. The town she knew so well in the daylight took on an alien and foreboding cast; it became a stranger to her, full of dark alleys, shadowed fields, and houses with doors like gaping maws.

“Where are we going?” she asked, breathless from exertion and tired down to her bones. She had been awake nearly a full 24 hours, and on her feet for most of it.

“Away, as far as we can.”

A few moments rest, and Kahlan calmed herself enough to rediscover the familiar markers of their path. They were on Water Street, headed away from Long Wharf, and with a few turns, would find themselves on the north edge of the Common.

“Should we not hide?”

The sailor visibly chafed at the moment of respite, though her chest heaved as she struggled for breath. Steam surrounded her, giving her the air of a ghost as unnaturally cold skin met warm night air. “It cannot be done. There is no place they cannot find. We must keep them to our rear or die.”

It occurred to Kahlan, watching as each panting breath left the sailor’s lips in a cloud of ice, that she could simply leave her and be free of whatever curse was following them. At the thought, her wrist burned, the mark left by the sailor’s icy grip a reminder. Was she tainted too, now, she wondered? Was she hunted? Had she unwillingly made an enemy of this phantom?

If the choice lay between cursed together and cursed alone, then it was no choice at all.

“Come,” the sailor said. “It will be day soon, and we will be able to rest.”

Soon, yes, but the moon still hung heavy in the sky, looming over the trees fringing the city’s far border. They continued to move and again, she felt lost among streets she’d roamed her entire life, roofs and gables throwing ominous shadows on the path before them. Their wandering felt aimless, like tracing the path of a madman, and she began to wonder what she was doing in the company of this stranger.

She began to wonder if she was following the ghoul, not fleeing it.

“Your name,” she demanded, stopping. One hand went to her chest, rubbing absently at an ache she couldn’t reach. “What is your name?”

The sailor turned, her frost-kissed skin glittering in the moonlight. “Cara,” she confessed without fight, seeing that Kahlan had reached a point teetering close to breaking. “Cara Mason. Commander aboard the HMS Macaria.”

“That I know,” Kahlan said, voice edged with malice. “Raider.”

Unconsciously, Cara’s hand moved to brush against the jagged ends of her hair. Her expression as emotionless as that of a statue, she said curtly, “I am a Raider no longer.”

******

“What is the cause of your affliction?”

They were lucky. The house, rather a shack, was on the edge of the burying place. It was abandoned, or if it wasn’t, its inhabitants had not seen fit to occupy it in months. Cara had used her knife to pry open the door, and on the inside, they found a straw pallet worn flat, a chair, and little else.

Cara sat huddled in the corner, hands wrapped around her knees, shivering violently. No longer generating the heat of movement, the cold was hard upon her, and Kahlan watched as she laid her head to her knees in defeat.

“It will go,” Cara said, voice muffled, “when day comes.”

And so it did, her skin regaining the pink of health as the sun crept over the horizon, but that was no answer.

“How came you to be this way?” Kahlan asked, steel in her voice that demanded answer. “Who is chasing you? Where are the others, the ones you were with yesterday?”

Cara straightened her limbs slowly, working the feeling back into them, and looked away. “We should rest.”

“And I should go, away from you. You’re cursed in punishment for your wicked deeds.”

“Perhaps I am.” Cara rubbed at her lip, thumb smearing the trickle of blood running from the now thawed cut. “There were four of us – myself, Dahlia, Denna, Triana. Now there are two. Maybe one. Maybe me, alone.” She wiped the blood on her breeches, the crimson stark against cream. “I need sleep, Madam, and so do you. Should you stay, I’ll give you your story.”

Kahlan knew she would not sleep, even as Commander Mason curled up on a bare straw mattress in the corner, breathing immediately slow and even. She should go, she knew she should, but what if the demon creature she’d but glimpsed the night before now followed her trail as well? Would she lead it back to the tavern, to Dennee? Was she cursed now too, and if so, did she deserve it? After all, the Commander had been brought to Kahlan’s door by her own wicked acts, in search of the purse Kahlan had robbed her of earlier that very day. Perhaps she’d but brought this specter of retribution with her, and now Kahlan would suffer as well.

Anger lashed through her. And would her father suffer? He was the one who had trained them in the art of theft and sent them among the crowds. They’d been girls, too young to know better, when he’d first set them upon this road. It had been his responsibility to guide them, and he had done so – away from decency and morality. Away from what was good and right, and when the time had come for her to try to find her own path, perhaps she’d been so corrupted there was no hope of recovery. Perhaps the mortal coils so often spoken of by the long-haired, fire-tongued preacher were what she could feel tightening around her.

Perhaps she was no better than the Raider and deserved no better a fate.

******

“There is bread and milk.”

As expected, Kahlan had slept little.

The Commander’s hair, now minus its confining braid, was wild from sleep. “My thanks,” she said, accepting the cup eagerly. “I had thought you would go.”

Kahlan was silent for a moment before giving a diffident shrug. Crouched on the floor, alone, Cara looked far less intimidating that she had the previous day. Kahlan didn’t make the mistake of thinking she was any less dangerous – her armaments attested to that – but she was surrounded by the peculiar vulnerability of one forced to defend herself on all sides without the benefit of allies. She was both vicious and fragile, a wounded and cornered animal in despair of avenues of escape. “You promised me a story.”

Cara examined the waning light of day through the small, half-shuttered window. Knowing what was to come, she felt the cold settle upon her, and shivered.

“I did,” she allowed, though she did not meet Kahlan’s eyes. “Is there wood? I would like a fire.”

There was wood in the corner. It was dry, and caught quickly; they huddled in front of it, the scent of hickory smoke filling the air, and Kahlan waited expectantly.

Cara stared into the flames as she began to speak.

“I know our reputation, but it wasn’t all plunder. We had a letter of marque, which Captain Rahl had obtained during the Seven Years War, and so we sailed the seas on the side of right. Even after hostilities ceased, the King had no mind to stop our activities. He has always enjoyed harrying the French, and we did that very well indeed. We’ve haunted the coasts of Africa, sailed under the Jamaican sun, and took rich cargos on the Atlantic trade routes. There were those who tried to stop us, but none prevailed. In time, we came to think ourselves invincible. The captain took to dreaming of new waters and the riches to be had there, and, caught up in his madness, we raised no objection.” Kahlan watched as another shiver ran through the Commander. It was hard to tell, in the gathering shadows, if her skin was taking on the icy blue-gray cast of the night before, and Kahlan knew she could not trust her eyes. Night was falling, and she was seeing ghouls in every corner. “We were not prepared for what we found, no matter what tales we had heard and what supplies we had laid by. He had decided to sail North. Find a path through the Artic seas to the Orient and we would create our own riches, he promised. Find a path and share in the secret and we’d lay in wait for ships with their bellies full of silks and spices and be rich beyond measure.”

“The ship was not purpose built and neither were we. It was a fool’s errand. That’s plain now. We were full of foolish pride and overconfident, sure we could succeed where all others had failed. He promised glory and we believed him, but we found nothing but misery. We spent the days trapped below deck wrapped in sleeping bags of reindeer fur with eiderdown linings, and still we suffered. The winds cut to the bone, and the riggings would freeze in the night. Come morning, we would be crawling over the lines with hammers and axes to chip it away, hoping we could retain enough feeling in our fingers not to somehow end up in the sea. And the sea… it wasn’t a sea. Not any longer. We sailed among packs of ice as far as the eye could see. We heard them grind against the hull in the dark, and many were the nights when I expected them to pierce straight through.”

The Commander looked off into the distance, as if seeing the scene in front of her.

“We urged Captain Rahl to retreat, but he would not. We had made no headway, he said, and would not leave until we had secured the gateway to our fortunes. Winter was hard upon us, we argued, but he did not listen. And so we stayed below decks, huddling together to stay warm, and listening to the wind howl around us. It was cold, so very cold, and even with as many furs as one could wear, we could never manage warmth. Time spent on watch was torture, caught in the wind and the spray, and talk of mutiny had begun to spread throughout the crew. With the wet all around, the furs – our only comfort – began to rot and the cold to seep into our very bones. We were going to die out there, and we knew it. The murmurings started, desire to overthrow Rahl and save ourselves, but none of us had the courage to be the first.”

“The days stretched on, more and more spent in darkness, with things nearing the point where there would be no retreat. You cannot imagine the misery of it. We’d not seen even the hint of a ship in weeks and knew we would not see another. Naught but fools would sail those seas in winter, and we were the only fools to be had. Still, Rahl plotted and held vigil, scanning the horizon until his fingers locked tight around his glass. He was convinced clear waters lay beyond the ice, and with them a clear path to riches. We lacked sufficient dedication, he said, and courage. Time passed, and a kind of madness spread through the crew. It was going to be the destruction of us all, I knew – the wind, the cold, the snow, the anger, the fear. One would take us.”

“The day he saw the ship, it was bitterly cold. I don’t know how he came to find it, but he was intent upon boarding her. It was folly. I could see that easily enough. It was going to be the day he finally led us to our death. The ice around the hull was too thick, almost a solid sheet, and I urged him to send a small party in reconnaissance. To try to break through would be madness and certain death, and all knew it. I thought he might be too far gone in his madness, too set on his murderous path, but with sufficient convincing, he relented.”

“We set off across the ice on foot, the four of us. It was reckless, but had we waited for the ice to part enough to bear one of our smaller boats, we could have been delayed days we did not have. It was safe enough, or seemed it. The pack was thick and steady, a solid mass nearly all the way to the Raven, as she was called. She was dark and silent as the grave, and it should have been warning enough of the death to come, but we were beyond sense. We loaded our packs and strapped spikes to our boots and climbed out onto the ice.”

“Close in, the pack broke. It was but a step from one floe to the next, and soon, we were upon her. We called, but there was no answer. We thought perhaps the wind had snatched our voices away, and so we pounded on the hull, but still, nothing. She was sitting low in the water and her life net was out, so the climb was short. My fingers were frozen through, even in my fur lined gloves. I couldn’t feel the rope and could have fallen even then, down into the water to be gone forever.”

Kahlan eased closer to the fire. She could feel the cold, the heavy lassitude of frozen limbs, and shivered violently.

“All was quiet on deck. She had the look of a ship abandoned. The best hope was that the souls onboard had found deliverance. They had been rescued, perhaps, or fled in the lifeboats. The nets were out, and she could have found trouble in the becalmed waters of summer, but it was false hope. It made no sense. The ship was afloat, no defect to be seen, and a search turned up her lifeboats, still securely stored. I should have known then that she was cursed. I should have gone back to the Macaria, killed Rahl, and steered us away from there and damn the consequences. But, perhaps Rahl’s sickness had infected me, for I continued on.”

“Sound carries across the ice. You can hear noise from a mile away as clearly as if it was next door, but in that moment, it was deathly silent. Even our footfalls were muffled by the inches of snow lying heavy on the deck. I thought to speak just to break the silence, but the ship itself urged quiet. We had brought a lantern and we lighted it as we descended the ladder to the Captain’s quarters. Still, even then, I thought we might find it empty.”

Cara looked up at Kahlan, eyes hard.

“We didn’t. The captain was at his desk, and his log book was open before him. He was staring straight ahead, as if he had been waiting on our arrival, and had he not been frozen through, I would have expected him to rise in greeting. His last entries were dated two years previous. They’d become trapped in the ice, it said, and time was growing short. First it was half rations, then one meal a day as supplies began to dwindle. They’d sent men out on the ice to search for paths to freedom with no success. Men began to die. Others had limbs blacken with frostbite, and with no doctor aboard, the bosun wielded the saw. Horner dead, it read. Spence dead. Parker dead. I looked at that log and I saw our future. I saw us dead, one by one, until none remained but Rahl in his madness. By the end, it page after page of the same notation. Still fast, it read. Still fast. Still fast. _Still fast._ And on the last day, again. All hope abandoned. Still fast.”

The story paused long enough for Cara to poke at the fire, a useless gesture that did nothing to clear from mind the memory. Her breath came quickly, the past and the present melding into one.

“That was not the worst of it. They were there in the hold, what was left of the crew, each looking as if he was fast asleep in his bedroll, with furs drawn up under their chins and eyes forever frozen shut. I could see us, in that ghost ship. I could see the Macaria, found years later by another helpless crew, and all of us in our bunks, asleep forever. I knew then there could be no more delay. I knew we must sail from this place, before it was too late, but I knew too the Captain’s resolve. He would not leave until there was something to show for our troubles, and so even as I knew better, I commanded the others to search the ship. Bring anything of value, I told them, and hope our offering is enough. I stayed with the Captain while they went below, and felt his eyes upon me as if he could see my trespass and cursed him for a fool.”

“He had a safe, and it was unlocked. It was as if he knew he had no more use for locks; they would not have mattered, I think, in the end. What use is a lock against the ice? Inside I found silver, two heavy bags. Carried, likely, in anticipation of his success. The others had found little that could be carried, but told me of how the hold was full of casks of wine and bolts of cloth. A rich haul, but we all knew this ship would be the death of us were we to return. So we made among us a pact, and took the bags of silver and what little treasures we could manage and swore we would impress upon the others the deadly future we’d found. I brought the sextant and compass, but left the log. I wish I could have left the memory of it as easily.”

Cara paused to take in a deep breath.

“I took, too, the Captain’s pocket watch. I wear it still, a reminder of what could have happened had we succumbed to Rahl’s madness. We were not away from danger, of course. Not by any means. The trek was clear again, the distance from floe to floe easily crossed, and yet still, the sea had her due. We heard nothing, not even a splash, but Triana was gone. We rushed to the edge of the ice, but in vain. I saw the trail of bubbles, and maybe the panic in her eyes, but I cannot be certain. She slipped into the water and disappeared as if she had never been there at all, and we searched for longer than she could have survived, but to no avail. It was a reminder of how quickly our fates could change, and we hesitated no longer. We sped toward the ship, prizes in hand, and counted ourselves lucky to be on her decks again. Rahl raged. He refused to give in, but we stood fast in the face of his anger. We shared our tale and the hum of mutiny went round the crew and he knew. He knew we would slit his throat and be gone from there with him still bleeding out on the ice, and in the face of it, even his insanity could not see him through to another day.”

“There was never a crew so happy to see the choppy gray of the Atlantic. Even Captain Rahl regained his senses, and it seemed as if we were to return to our happy lives of privateering. I could not forget what I had seen, but I thought the memories would fade given time.”

Cara pulled out the pocket watch of which she’d spoken. The gold glinted in the firelight, and Kahlan stared, transfixed. On the front cover, she could make out the fine etching of a ship in full sails, and wondered if it was the Raven.

“That is when things started to change,” Cara continued, her voice going soft. “We had been away from the Arctic for weeks, but still, I could not find warmth. It was worse in the night, and I took to roaming the decks swaddled in furs, evading the night’s watch as best I could. It would come upon me with the setting of the sun, such a sudden, fierce cold I thought I must be dead. I must be trapped in the ice, drowned perhaps. Trapped forever in that haunted sea. There could be no other explanation, for how could I be so cold and yet live? Yet it became clear that I did indeed live, and I learned I was not alone in my affliction. Denna and Dahlia suffered the same, but no one else, and it was then I knew the truth. We were cursed. We had stepped foot on that charnel ship and no matter how far away we fled, we would never step foot off of it again.”

“It was hard to hide what was happening from the rest of the crew, but we managed. We would meet on the quarterdeck as soon as we could slip away, shivering throughout the night. There was no plan. How do you defeat a curse? How do you escape death? Soon, it no longer seemed to matter if we ate or if we slept. Dahlia wasted away quickly. She was always the most delicate of us, and a fever claimed her despite the cold. I would have followed, but we made port at Halifax. I have loved the sea since I first saw her, but having land beneath my feet gave me hope. There was no change in my condition, and I knew I would forever suffer it, but the days were a respite. We took to sailing up and down the coast on watch for pirates, and somehow, knowing that landfall was but a few days away, I began to craft a new existence for myself.”

Cara caught Kahlan’s eyes, her own expression flat and empty. “That is when they came. We woke them from their slumber, and they have not forgiven us.”

Despite the heat of the fire, Kahlan shivered violently.

“Two days past, they came to exact their due. He is as he was the day we boarded the ship, frozen solid and lifeless, yet somehow he walks. We were on-ship, bound to depart the next morning, when I heard the cry. They say he climbed up the anchor chain. The first of us to see him ran him through and watched helpless as he continued forward, the blade sinking ever further into his belly. Nothing served to stop him – not shot, not blades, not fire.”

Cara’s chin lowered for a moment and her jaw clenched tightly. “We lost three.” She stretched her hands out toward the fire. In them, Kahlan caught sight of a fine tremble. “It did not take long for word to spread. They came for me after nightfall, and there was no hiding what I have been made. They saw me for the cursed being I am, and exorcised me.” Again, her fingers brushed the ragged ends of her hair. “Too late, and for naught, because he was upon us again. They emptied their pistols, but still he came. I ran. I thought perhaps he would follow, and he did, but not before exacting his toll.”

The fire crackled softly in the intervening silence.

“And now?” Kahlan asked softly.

“And now I run still.” Cara looked up at her, eyes full of misery. “I have no ship, no friends. I have no purpose in life other than surviving to see another day, no hope but that he may tire. That perhaps he may have mercy and leave me in peace.” She laughed, short and bitter. “Though it is not likely.”

Kahlan’s fingers were on the sleeve of Cara’s coat before she realized it. “That is no life.”

“Perhaps it is the reward I deserve for the life I have lived.”

Kahlan felt the brand of Cara’s touch on her arm, and wondered if her fate had found her as well. “How came you to be one of Rahl’s Raiders?”

Cara’s expression tightened. “He took me from the streets,” she said, hands tightening into fists at the memory. “We thought it was but the bloody flux, but Mother and Father only worsened. The cholera swept through, and soon they joined the bodies piled high for the pits. In but days it was only my sister and I, and she was young enough to find favor with the orphan’s house. I was a beggar on the streets, wearing little more than rags and starving, when Rahl found me. He gathered us to him, beggars all, and without him, we would have died. We owed him all.”

“Whatever you owed, you have repaid,” Kahlan said, tightening her grip on Cara’s coat. Inside their little shack, light was fleeing. “If you wish to continue to live, you must find a way to fight.”

“There is no way.” Cara’s jaw hardened. “How can you kill that which is already dead?”

Between them, Cara’s breath began to turn to ice. Kahlan watched frost crawl across her cheeks and ice bead in her lashes.

“It is begun,” Cara said, weary. “You must go.”

“And if the monster chases me as well?”

Cara reached for Kahlan’s hand, holding it gently. Despite the light touch, her fingertips stung against Kahlan’s skin with the peculiar fire of cold. “You are not afflicted as I am. Run. Do not look back. Even if I cannot defeat him, I will find a way to keep him from you. You have my word.”

The word of one of Rahl’s Raiders. A day before, Kahlan would have spit upon it.

She did not know why she said it. It flew in the face of reason and self-preservation, and all for a cursed woman she had known for a day. Still, Kahlan said, “I cannot leave you.”

“Can you not feel it?” Cara asked, a smile gentler than any other that had graced her face held soft in the corners of her frozen lips. “They come. He comes for me. Even death could not be more persistent. Go. It will be a comfort to me, knowing you are safe. You’ve been kind to me, thief, and I could not bear to have your death on my hands. One day, should I defeat this curse, perhaps I will find you again, and it will be your turn to tell the stories.”

Kahlan could feel it. She began to shiver despite the heat of the fire, the cold settling upon her oppressively. She looked again at Cara, dusted gray-blue and encrusted with ice. Her flintlock was still at half-cock, her knife in its scabbard at her waist. How could she provide more protection than either of those, with only her thief-quick hands? Why should she want to stay with this sailor who was surely doomed to death? This woman who a day earlier had been a menace, who had come upon her in her tavern and put a knife to her throat?

This woman who had been an orphan on the streets before she was made into the Raider Kahlan saw before her.

“You must promise it,” she said, a tremor in her voice that had nothing to do with the cold. “Promise to come to me when this is finished.”

And though she could see in Cara’s eyes that she knew it for a lie, Cara still said, “I promise.”

The door flew open under that nonexistent gale. Distantly, Kahlan heard the scrape of boots against stone.

“Do not disappoint me,” she said, laying her palm against the curve of Cara’s cheek despite the pain of it.

Outside of the shack and away from the grip of the phantom chill, Kahlan felt herself begin to sweat with the heat and humidity of the night. She heard, still, the footsteps, growing ever closer. Though they were far from harbor, she smelled the brine of the sea in the air. It was folly to stay – what if they came for her, no matter Cara’s assurances? – but she could not run.

Even with only the moon to light them, death was clear in the faces that appeared. Ice hung thickly from their beards, and their eyes were devoid of any hint of life. Their faces were the blue-gray of Cara’s, made duller by death, and their clothes, frozen stiff with sea water, creaked as they moved. They were three, and even though they moved inexorably closer, Kahlan could not run. Her breath began to come fast, leaving her lungs burning as they had the night before when she and Cara had raced through the streets. As if hearing it, the tallest – the Captain she was sure – turned his head to her. She saw his lifeless stare as Cara must have seen it on his ship, and she imagined him as he must have been in life. _Still fast_ , she thought, and wondered at the agony of knowing everyone under your care was condemned to die. Was it because his endless sleep had been disrupted? Was that why he was here, intent on punishing the transgressors? Was Cara to die because none could escape the grip of the curse of the charnal ship, or because she had dared to intrude on the peace that death must have brought with it?

Run, she thought, watching as the trio continued to close on the shack, but Cara did not. Had it been defeat that Kahlan had seen her eyes? Had she accepted this fate and consigned herself to it, death as inescapable for her as it had been for the Raven’s cursed crew?

The Captain crossed the threshold, disappearing into the flickering light emanating from the shack. His minions paused outside it, swaying on their feet like puppets separated from their marionette. She waited for the sound of the flintlock firing, sure that Cara would not accept this fate meekly. She had promised, had she not?

The shack shook. Kahlan heard a grunt and knew it to be Cara’s. Was this it, then? Was that the sound of life extinguished?

She thought of the bag of silver Cara had come to retrieve and wanted to laugh with bitterness. It must have been pride and nothing more that had compelled her to come for it. Kahlan had taken something of hers and she demanded it back, even if silver served no purpose for a corpse.

The shack shook again.

Had that been it? Had she come to the tavern simply because she could not stand to be parted from that which was hers?

“Cara,” Kahlan said, the name little more than a gasp. Her feet were moving, drawing her nearer to the shack. Despite the noise of it, the minions did not turn. They guarded the door with their hands at their sides, swaying as they waited for further summons, with eyes blank as they stared, unseeing, into the distance.

She should run. She should do as Cara had requested and flee. There was no place for her in the affairs of the cursed, and no sense of her death at the hands of lifeless, accursed ghosts. And yet still she advanced, slowing as she drew nearer. There was nothing for it but to move forward, or so she told herself, slipping between the still swaying guards and into the frigid cold of the shack. Letting loose the breath she held, having expected to find herself caught up in icy arms and torn to pieces, she took a moment to orient herself.

Against the wall, held high off the ground so that her feet kicked helplessly against air, Cara looked at her with anguish in her eyes. Her neck was encircled by the Captain’s hands, and her own were beating at them fruitlessly. Already, Kahlan could see the way her eyes dimmed. It was a matter of seconds, she knew, and nothing was going to sway the still and determined form of the Captain.

Cara’s hands fell, one reaching out to Kahlan as if trying, one last time, to ward her away.

Instead, Kahlan stepped closer. Nearer to the Captain, the cold was unbearable. She felt it sink into her blood and imagined ice crystals growing in her veins. In seconds, she lost feeling in her fingers, and her eyes watered with it. The tears froze, and she wondered if this was to be her last foolish act – failure before she even had a chance to try.

Her fingers fumbled at Cara’s coat, numb and nearly useless. “Here,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, the cold metal burning like a coal in her hand. Fingers clumsy, she brushed against the crown and nearly dropped the watch as the faceplate snapped open. “Is this what you have come for?”

For the first time, the Captain looked away from Cara. Kahlan saw nothing in his frozen, dead face: no hint of question, no hint of malice, no hint of any human expression.

She held up her hand, the pocket watch clasped tightly in her frozen fingers. Her eyes caught on the inside of the now opened faceplate and the script that unfurled across it even as the Captain turned to her.

_To my beloved husband, 1771_

Cara slumped to the floor, his hold on her suddenly released. He stared at the pocket watch for a moment before reaching for it, and as his fingers touched it, the cold became so unbearable that Kahlan knew she would die from it.

His eyes seemed somehow to soften.

“Kahlan,” Cara said, pulling weakly at her skirt and clasping her blade as if there was fight still to be had. “Kahlan.”

The captain plucked the pocket watch from her grasp as delicately as he might have picked a flower. He ran his thumb over the tracing, filling the lines with frost, and let loose a haunting, tortured cry.

Kahlan felt the breath in her lungs freeze.

A moment more, and with the watch clutched tightly in his hand, he turned and began a slow, shambling retreat. He took no notice of Cara on the floor, struggling to regain her feet, or of Kahlan, unable to hide the terror in her eyes. They had disappeared from his notice, important no longer.

As he crossed the threshold, Kahlan collapsed to the ground, frozen to her core. She was vaguely aware of Cara’s arm around her, of the tug of her body closer to the fire, or the warmth of Cara’s body as she curled around her.

With the fire’s warmth so tantalizingly close, she slept soundly within the safety of Cara’s protective grasp. When she woke again, the sun was high in the sky and the fire was cold in the grate. She had been covered by a blanket, but still, Cara was there, holding her fast.

“Kahlan,” Cara said, the word barely audible. She coughed violently, and Kahlan remembered the way she had looked, pinned to the wall with the light fading from her eyes.

“Am I still alive?”

“If there is mercy in the world, you are,” Cara said, her voice little more than a rasp. “You should not have come back.”

Kahlan pushed up to a seated position, needing to see Cara. She flinched as she put pressure on the hand that had held the locket. It still burned from the Captain’s touch, and as she held it up, she could see, in the faint light, the etching of the Raven in full sails burned into her palm.

Outside the window, a bird trilled in anticipation of summer. “And if I had not, you would be dead. Instead, the curse is lifted, is it not?”

Cara’s head dropped. “Indeed. I owe you much.”

For the first time since Cara had put a knife to her throat, Kahlan smiled. She reached out with her marked palm and placed it against Cara’s cheek, needing the touch as she needed air. Even as the mark burned, she held it there as Cara relaxed into the touch, her lips pressing the lightest of kisses against Kahlan’s injured flesh.

She inched closer, letting Cara draw her into an embrace once again. “Keep your promise, then, Raider,” she said softly, “and I will collect.”


End file.
